


Conversation

by handful_ofdust



Category: 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 18:29:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2357885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handful_ofdust/pseuds/handful_ofdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events in Contention, Ben Wade is left alone with his ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversation

After he kills Charlie Prince for killing Dan Evans, Ben Wade often finds it impossible to consistently recall what he and Charlie once did together with any degree of real accuracy, let alone pleasure. Oh, he knows Charlie loved _him_ , all right, fierce and single-minded as some hunting hawk loves the glove it perches on, the hand that feeds and soothes and hoods it; knows he shared that love to a degree, usually contingent on whatever he did or didn’t want from Charlie at any given time. But for the rest…

  
Details start to slip away, one by one, in momentary increments: Charlie’s shy, sidelong gaze flirting with his own, then flicking past, as though scalded. That furtive-proud way he’d square his shoulders and check both holsters, reverent as a Paddy crossing himself, whenever he thought Ben might be looking.

  
His bright hair, hat-crimped, catching the sun on those few occasions he found to doff it outside. His infrequent smile, equally bright—most usually drawn by a difficult shot made easy-seeming, particularly if the shot in question resulted in some Pinkerton’s death.

  
One night in a thousand: Ben and Charlie, sat up next to each other in some Mexican saloon, close enough to touch shoulders; Ben barely bothering to even glance his way, eyes fixed on the gal pouring out the Tequila, pretending he couldn’t hear Charlie sigh. While Charlie just hung on his elbow like the world’s worst conscience, stubborn in his wilful self-delusion—a bad angel with dusty leather wings who never once thought to dare question the whys and wherefores of any damn thing Ben might have in mind, only murmur:

  
_Stick around longer? Sure, sounds good to me. You just go on ahead and do that, you really wanna, boss…_

  
And then, hot on its heels in a companionable flash, one more morning—might be the one after, might be not: Charlie and he laid out in yet another splay-backed bed, rutting comfortably against each other, pleasantly unhurried. With Ben nuzzling the top of one neat-made ear, as Charlie bit back at Ben’s throat in return—a bare nip, all lip with no teeth, like some sleepy cat. ‘Til Ben’d had enough, pinned him down further, and did what they were both really after ‘til Charlie groaned, yelled, laughed right out loud. Near spoke in tongues, like he’d been took with the Spirit at some camp-tent meeting.

  
 _Tell the truth, now, though: Don’t that hurt?_ Ben remembers asking, once, amazed at Charlie’s unrepentant appetite for being on the receiving end of an act most men would flee from, just on principle. To which Charlie shook his head with a little shiver, ecstatic, and replied—

  
_Well…‘course it does._

  
Adding, then, after a reflective half-beat: _Ain’t it supposed to?_

  
Memory on memory, lost and found then lost again, forever. A house of burning cards, tumbling down. Shivering itself away to ash, leaving nothing in its wake but the wavery red outline of where it once stood.

  
***

  
Getting out of Yuma’s an easy trick to turn, as always—so easy, Ben almost wonders why he should bother. But even down deep as he finds himself in Contention’s wake, he’s still not sure the end of a rope is where he wants to die. Or where Dan Evans might have wanted him to die, either, by the absolute end of their acquaintance…

  
Oh, and that idea may well be mere sophistry; probably is, given who it comes from. But it’s certainly good enough to spur him up and over that prison wall—not to mention off into the desert, galloping hard, with a posse at his whistle-called horse’s heels—all the same.

  
So days later, nights later, here’s where he finds himself. Not back across the border, or holed up in any one of the many… _holes_ he and Charlie (and the rest) used to frequent; no, this time Ben has let himself be blown seawards once more, all the way to San Francisco, home of salt air, shaky ground and green-eyed sea captains’ daughters alike. He takes a cue from one of his more elaborate scams with Charlie, shaves off his beard, reassumes the kindly Reverend William mask once more; little enough likelihood of anyone from Bewelcome making it over this far, and anyhow, what if they do? For though he may have buried the Hand of God beneath his landlady’s back-step, it’s not like the world ain’t full of other guns…or like he’s forgotten how to shoot, either.

  
“Mister Beckford” preaches in parlors hung with teak, under funeral psalters worked in human hair, and soon enough finds himself a net of faithful parishoners willing to feed him, clothe him—even put him up a night or two, or more. Eventually, one older lady points him towards a local house of ill repute where one of the younger denizens claims to talk with spirits, asking him to maybe reacquaint her with the Word of God on the subject (as per old King Saul and the Witch of Endor, no doubt). Or possibly that part in _Leviticus_ about suffering not a witch to live, if she’s feeling a bit less kindly than she seems to be…

  
Ben promises to try his best, one way or the other. Seems the least he can do, considering how long it’s been since he’s seen the inside of an honest-to-God bordello; the end’ll surely be well worth the means, even if he doesn’t end up spending any of of Old Missus Kindly’s money.

  
***

  
 _Think of someone you got unfinished business with,_ the girl—Missy?—tells him, taking Ben’s hands in hers. The room she does her business in (both kinds, probably) is small and dim and hung with velvet that ain’t been cleaned in quite some time; someone’s brought in a round-topped table for them to sit at during the “consultation”, so small Ben can feel her knobbly knees pressed up against his in ways that may not be entirely intentional. The glass cup shielding the gas-sconce above them is frosted red, casting down a hellish, uterine light.

  
 _All right,_ Ben says. _Then what?_

  
_Oh, you can leave all that to me. Just look into the candle, deep, deeper—yeah, that’s it. Just keep on lookin’…_

  
Here’s where they bring on the ectoplasm and the magic lantern, no doubt, Ben thinks, wearily. But finds his eyes drawn stealthily flame-wards, nevertheless—wanting to find Dan Evans’ drawn, too-thin face there, and getting someone else’s instead. Maybe because he’s the one most folks would assume is currently burning in Hell rather than taking his newly two-legged ease in Heaven, waiting on his wife and kids to arrive, probably with barely a thought to spare for the outlaw who got him killed…

  
And: _Oh,_ the girl blurts out all of a sudden, with what seems like genuine surprise, pressing both thin-skinned palms to her flat little chest; _oh LORD, that’s sore. What-all was it you DID to him, mister?_

  
Ben shakes his head, silently. Remembers the curve of Charlie’s spine pressed fast against his chest, sweat sticking them both together like blood. That gasp he’d make on the out-stroke, louder in his pleasure than Ben’d ever heard him in pain. Tough little Charlie Prince, isolate and singular, penetrable at a glance, yet—in the end—still utterly inexplicable.

  
(What-all, indeed.)

  
 _Never did believe in ghosts too much, myself,_ Ben starts to say—but cuts off quick as she shivers once more and hangs down her head, shaking ‘til her heels drum on the floor, like spirits rapping underneath the table. And when she looks up at him again, staring through a tangle of loosed yellow hair, those pale blue eyes of hers have turned well and truly green.

  
 _Yeah, I remember,_ she replies, in a dead man’s voice. _Don’t really believe in too much of anything, though, do you? Boss._

  
Ben takes a single dry swallow that seems to last a lifetime, before venturing—

  
_Charlie?_

  
(That _you_ , Charlie Prince?)

  
 _You know damn well who I am,_ the girl says, deadpan, in that same flat voice. _The one got shot down in the street for saving you a trip to Yuma, just so’s you could get back on that train your own damn self while I lay there with flies on my face, already startin’ to rot. Why was it you had to do me like that, Ben Wade, after everything I ever done for you?_

  
Ben feels the world around him rock and reel, the velvet-curtained room turn stifling, even as his palms turn cold and moist and prickly; the candle swims in front of his blinking eyes, haloed with a drunken migraine haze. And crazy as it is, he still finds himself actually answering this woman like he’s talking straight to Charlie himself—Charlie Prince, pistoleer, dead and buried these last six months under a pauper’s wooden cross outside of Contention, Arizona. That’s if the town council didn’t take a vote to throw his carcass on the dump instead, for the vultures and coyotes to make a meal on.

  
_Well…you disobeyed me, Charlie. Heard me say ‘no’, right to your face, and then you went on ahead and did it anyways. Would’ve made me look weak in front of the rest of the gang, if I was to forgive you such a transgression—_

  
_The gang, right. ‘Cept for how they’re all dead, too._

  
_Well, what was I to do? Would you’ve let ME walk away?_

  
Quietly: _…never._

  
(But then, you knew _that_.)

  
 _You just got to stop haunting me, Charlie,_ is all Ben can think to say, at last, in answer. To which the girl just shrugs—that same half-rise, half-fall at once, an invisible raptor-wing flap. Drawling—

  
_Well, you were the one wanted to talk to ME. Weren’t you, boss?_

  
_No, I…_ Ben shakes his own head, angry at himself; this is ridiculous, Goddamnit. Then manages, after a moment: _I mean…I ain’t even your boss, anymore. WhoEVER you really are._

  
To which Charlie just shakes the girl’s not-blonde-enough head back at him and smiles, thin and bitter, far more knowing in his death than he ever was in life.

  
 _Oh, but you’ll always be my boss, Ben Wade,_ he says, _whether you want to be, or not. Always…don’t you know that?_

  
Ben considers this a minute. _Yes, Charlie,_ he says, finally. _I think I always must have._

  
A breathless breath hangs between them, mingling with Ben’s own, familiar in ways that might possibly break someone else’s (considerably less hardened) heart. Until—

  
 _Okay, then,_ the girl says, in Charlie’s voice, smiling Charlie’s smile. And shuts those green eyes of (his) again, forever.

  
***

  
Green eyes, green wounds, gangrene: Hot and putrid, bright with shameful rot. Ben sits there in the red dark with the girl’s slack body slumped opposite, feeling like he can smell his own stink, the fierce stench of the unhealed. Feeling like he’ll wear it ‘til time’s own end like Cain with his stripes, crawling off into the wilderness, out east of Eden; like it’s maybe only right and fitting that he should, a judgement from the same God whose words he’s learned without believing, and never quoted but in deception or mockery.

  
Because: You do reap what you sow, he thinks, and that’s a fact. For _from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment…_

_  
(Isaiah 1:6)_

  
Ben Wade sighs, and rises, ordering himself one last time, before he disposes of vanity entirely. Then puts the old woman’s money down on the table piece by piece, every last silver dollar of it. So by the time the girl comes back to herself, he’ll have already gone his way—solitary, unmarked, unrecognized. Treading out those endless vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored, towards an ever-retreating horizon…

  
…without even the lover he murdered's ghost, from now on, for his companion.

  
THE END


End file.
